A House Homecoming for All

Cait\'s impetuous mind wasn\'t exactly up to the challenge of devising a methodical, reliable appraoch in dealing with the location or attitude of Andrew, once she\'d found him. It had been almost oo simple apparating there; the now oddly tarnished device had shrunken some after the inexorable transubstantiation of her arrival - she swore, she\'d become a toadstool in the swaddling darkness. Andrew looked starved and barely able to stand without assistance; witohut much thought, Cait entrusted all familiar perpicacilyto hto her heart and gave the device to Andrew in order for him to get well and maybe be put under closer surveillance back at Hogwarts.

Cait\'s corona was barely vie une under the deadened prenumbras of tlighlight and only appeared as a vague yellow sheen. Creeping along, Cait\'s hair flew up on the back of her neck, and she was constantly looking over her shoulder until she spotted something not far off. She had to keep reminding herself that \"things may be closer than they appear\" in the dimness of the channel; this gave her a chuckle as the absurdity of the entire situation took hold - she\'d rather think of that every time she looked in her side mirror than in some lurid dungeon with adamantine chains on every wall.

Before she could dwell any further on her muggle past, she heard a soft scuffling from behind her and promptly sunk to the ground in the midle of the darkest part of the passage. There, to her utter disbelief, was darling Tiera carrying something in a shiny black box and humming something vaguely reminiscent of a hymn. Teeth grinding, Cait remained silent as her eyes followed her right into what oculd only be described as a giant vagina. It seemed the longest slit in the wall, casting an eerie shadow along theline of stones in its closest proximity.

\"Our Father who art in heaven...\"Cait heard Tiera whisper with passionate intensity and mentally smacked herself for not seeing this coming. But as Tiera walked through the opening, Cait could barely make out a baby\'s wailing. Shuddering some weight off of her onerous task, Cait fell in along the same path and whispered the same prayer to admitted to the strangest gathering she\'d ever seen.

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Madam Pomfry cursed herself for leaving the halfling alone for so long by an open window of all things; she\'d forgotten that house elves could magically appear and dissapear beyond the lucid thread of apparation and into something more tangable than dark magic itself. It was a logical assumption really: that they would want to comiserate with such a nefarious warlord, at least they would have something in common - being excluded and isolated from regular magical proceedings amongst wizards.

It was unknown however, even to the eldest of house elves that it was the very same man who had subjugated them eons ago as was related to the one they were now espousing mindlessly. Jessica had a lot to live up to along the lines of pernicious glee and magnitude; it was a shame really. If she hadn\'t been so good, she could\'ve been so deliciously evil.

Of course, she\'d let Dumbledore know as soon as possible and was assured that Cait and Jessica would retrieve the babe and all would be salvaged in the end; Pomfry wasn\'t so sure. Although Jessica\'s frown had softened a tad upon spending some time with the thing during her recovery from Tiera\'s onslought, she didn\'t feel too comfortable entrusting its welfare to such a surly child, bent upon
her own recompensing frivolities concerning Severus. But then, what unfractuous beginnings had she incured in the wizarding world to begin with - all acrimony and no real empathy from a man who was supposedly the most powerful and important wizard of the time.

Pomfry sighed as she cleaned up the beds a bit; it would be just two more days before Hogwarts was officially open and chock full of new and old arrivals for the next year. And yet, if this giant debacle wasn\'t taken care of, it may not open at all.

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\"Well, you know what the connection is between that halfling and Tiera is, don\'t you?\" Severus queried, stuffing his face with a most uncharacteristic crumpet dripping in butter and preservatives. Jessica pulled a disdainful face and shook her head to Lucius\' delight.

\"You shouldn\'t make him feel bad; he could do with gaining a few pounds,\" Lucius murmured and licked the shell of her ear causing both Severus and Jessica to gasp indignantly.

\"One romp and you think we\'re star crossed lovers, do you?\" Jessica fumed and stole away to greasy-faced Magee whose death glare had reached new lengths of condemnation. Lucius blinked and broke out laughing once more, Severus just about getting ready to curse the bastard into oblivion and Jessica eying Severus\' now neglected crumpet with a preditorial eye.

\"What\'s the connection, Severus?\" Jessica asked, pretending to simply ignore the blonde\'s hyperventilation.

\"She\'d trying to recreate the Christian nativity scene, I believe...\" Jessica\'s eyes flicked across the room util she spotted an old wooden chair not doing much of anything.

\"I think we should make crosses out of that,\" Jessica pointed earnestly and looked up at Snape with worried wisdom. Severus cocked a brow and jammed the rest of his victuals down his maw before Jess could make another comment.

\"You imagine he\'ll immolate the halfling thing then?\" Lucius asked, still sighing languidly, legs stretched out and hair all tousled.

Both Jess and Severus bit their bottom lips at the exact same moment, garnering them more hysterical bouts of laughter from the blonde until Severus knocked him out with a stupefy and put him on the bed so his precious arse didn\'t get too sore.

\"We should go-\" Jessica started and reached for her cloak hanging by the door.

\"No.\"

\"What? You aren\'t going by yourself-\"

\"I am, you don\'t know many curses and you aren\'t finished recovering-\"

\"You know perfectly well that the majority of Death Eaters won\'t be anywhere near Voldemort but out and about looking for us - I\'m safer in Voldemort\'s guest room than I am here...\" Jessica sighed and looked down at her feet, \"the guarding wards won\'t hold up forever...\"

Severus couldn\'t rightly argue with any of it as per usual and threw her the boots he\'d had to unlace with massive effort upon their arrival to the Leaky Couldron.

\"You\'re worried about your friend, aren\'t you?\" Severus asked nonchalantly, sitting down beside Jessica and looking out straight ahead as before.

\"You know as well as I do that Dumbledore\'s probably sent her out looking for us, or worse, looking for Andrew and Tiera. In fact, he probably thinks she can do a better job of it because she\'s a bloody Gryffindor,\" she scoffed, \"you know, she\'ll die facing off Tiera, honestly, she will- Tiera\'s mad, absolutely bonkers... she\'ll take pity and then... then...\"

Severus had already smothered her with the foresight tevenevent Jess\' tears from affecting him as unnervingly as they had before. Sighing, he rolled her face between his sleeves unti she was decent enough for her face to be relatively dry.

\"Why do you always do that?\" Jessica hiccupped and looked directly at Snape\'s faltering mask.

\"Do what?!\" he barked and nearly made Jess jump out of her skin.

\"Why do you always look away from me when we\'re next to each other?\" to this, Snape visibly shirked and budged over slightly. Jessica pointed as evidence and he shrugged in return.

\"Crying women are unsettling,\" Snape mumbled and stood up from the tiny bench to do up his cloak.

\"Because you don\'t know why they\'re crying, or because you don\'t know how to stop them crying, or if you\'re the cause of it?\" Jessica asked, each time making Snape blench further into transparency, a diaphanous relfection of the Baron on his most colourful days.

\"All of the above, you astute little bitch.\"

And with that, Jessica and Severus apparated to Voldemort\'s lair not soon after Cait who was trundling past a group of Death Eater\'s making coddling noises at the halfling she\'d first found abandoned and wailing.

It seemed so appropriate for its life to commense and be allayed into stillness at this of all venues. Following the sound of Tiera\'s monotone like litany of religious refrain was like trying to pinpoint where its sound was bouncing off of, almost impossible. But, Cait trundled on until at last, one last door to a smaller room opened to which she assumed must\'ve belonged to Tiera and hopped inside quickly, her wand at the ready.

\"Tiera?\" she whispered and looked around blankly at the surroundings. Relics of the most archaic Christian sentiment were scattered about; obviously, Volemort himself had been relatively well versed in the \"predilection\" of God and strife\'s commandments. To the side of her bed\'s right post lay a piece of an actual cross in which there was still residue from a dying man... Cait wondered if Big D actually had acess to regenerating actual historical testament to Christ\'s demise and rebirth.

Cait sighed and moved to the mirror where she stood and looked at herself obliquely; she was thankful for a moment of ease and casual observation in the midst of paranoid skitzophrenia in a magical kingdom. It wasn\'t hard to imagine the progression of Tiera\'s insanity when faced with such a monster; she must\'ve known it all wasn\'t real, on some level though. Perhaps he\'d used a mild Imperio on her, but Cait new that she was attempting to rationalise the untenable and looked behind her just in tim to see Tiera\'s waif-like form come floating in a trance-like state.

\"Tiera! Come here, are you alright?\" Cait ushered with open arms only to be ignored as the black box glistened wantonly tangled in her arms.

\"Tiera, what\'s that?\" Cait asked softly, trying to maintain eye contact with the wandering remnant of a friend. Tiera\'s face opened up like a surreal flower just about to die.

\"It\'s how we\'ll start anew...\" Cait blinked and shook her head resolutely, trying to instill into herself that this wasn\'t the Tiera she once knew and calmly approached her with the box.

\"Really, can you show me?\" Cait asked, trembling for fear of being smoted with one supernatural beam of dark magica Tiera now formidably possessed after siding with Voldemort. But to her relief, she was merely led to another room in which there was a small granite slab in the centre, the desolate environment lendto ato a feeling of impending doom and misery.

Above it was a crucifix large enough to hold a grown man and several dub out foot holds for onlookers, who would be indiefinately partially involved in the proceedings. Cait\'s mouth dropped at the scene in front of her and she automatically took hold of her friends robes out of nostalgic instinct.

\"Don\'t be afraid, Cait. You won\'t be the one to suffer. Here, I\'ll show you where to stand.\"

Cait\'s brain raced for anyway to pospone her own demise and leapt forward to grasp the box and open it. To her dismay, all that was inside was a tiny golden cross with the most delicate, eaily breakable string to hold it around one\'s neck... small enough for a baby\'s neck.

Cait whimpered as she clenched the black box in her hand, it\'s form now disturbingly malleable, as that of mercury and she felt as though she were about to faint from her piety-lacking realization.

\"Tiera, I believe in God too, you know. I go to church and say my p-prayers at n-night,\" Cait nearly wept at her indirect plea for life, \"but this isn\'t the way to be guarentee a plot in heaven... this is... this is...\"

Tiera\'s solemnly open expression contorted into a grimace most similar to the gargoyles overtop of Cantebury Cathedral as she lunged at Cait and held her to the ground.

\"You won\'t ruin this... you won\'t!\" she shrieked into her lou loud enough to result in permanent hearing damage. Cait winced and relinquished her hold on the box. Retrieving it with a prideful smirk, Tiera swept off in search of her master to inform him that one of their witnesses had arrived.

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\"You scrofulous shit!\" Jessica cried as Snape was tied down in front of the halfling they\'d striven so diligently to protect.

\"Well, what do you expect, dear cousin? A homecoming party?\" Big D chortled as Snape was lifted up into a vertical position.

\"It is unfortunate, however, that my plans have to be augmented in replacing the seeing boy with the this cozening substitude of mental magic. Isn\'t trighright, Severus?\" Severus didn\'t look at Big D but held contact with Jessica who was being restrained and stripped in front of him by two other Death Eaters.

\"Now, my dearest Tiera. We have our setting, do we need anything else?\" Tiera stepped stoically from behind the salient statue of Voldemort, directly in front of a writhing Jessica.

\"I want her to be the first to die after our sacrifice,\" she said firmly, causing Jessica to spit in her face with the fury still encased in her bosom. Slowly, she wiped the wet away with her spit and leant forward to whisper in her ear.

\"Try writing an assay on this after our eternizo.\"

Jessica\'s brows jumped up and a small smirk escaped her, even when she was being shackled nude and beaten to the stone floor.
\"So you\'ve learned some new words through my cousin\'s influence, no doubt? Well, good. Perhaps you\'ll understand when I tell you you\'re days as a dedicated sychophant will all be for naught. You see, he\'ll kill you too as you\'re just his little punchinello - a sad clown for him to bark at for jumps and tricks. Don\'t you notice? Don\'t you see that he\'s impelling you to commit these atrocities through your faith of all things? Something that was so sacred to you in your right mind! Or has that changed! Is it all an act now,\" Severus winced at what could potentially be the moment of their murder for suggesting disloyalty in the ranks.

\"Perhaps you\'ve outdone all of us, even in my Slytherin cunning - Tiera, the great pretender - battling a \"al ial illness\" at the same time as a raving maniac of a master!\" Big D\'s scowl deepened and he appraoched his most newly aquainted follower with menace.

\"Yes, that\'s what it is, isn\'t it? And the house elves! You didn\'t even care about them, did you? If you had been a truly loyal servant, you would\'ve taken more of a role in Dobby\'s offspring from the beginning! You\'re such a pretender, Tiera; a wretched, cowardly pretender whose only means of self-satisfaction is through the punishment of others,\" Jessica\'s chest heaved but she would not stop until she saw the vase break on the cement of delusion.

\"If you truly think you\'re the Virgin Mary in this penultimate hell you\'ve immersed yourself in, then I cannot blame you. But, Tiera, know that you will die soonafter your \"son\" however authentic you ever wished it to be... it will be that way. You still have a choice though... now.\"

Lucius stared at her, semi-awake after his rushed abduction from the Leaky Couldrfterfter the untracable guard had lost its potency.
The whole room was silent for awhile until Tiera finally broke it and hurled the black box to the floor; Jessica wouldn\'t dare smirk just yet, but bore deep into the cavernous depths of an unstable mind.

\"We aren\'t so different, you and I - we both took a path not designed for our destinies. By all rights, you should be here, Jess - completing your family\'s prophesy for your own gain. But no! You refuted it along with these two officious bastards. You call me a pretender, Jessica, when you are no better? I may die, but you will first-\"

\"But what does the order matter when we\'re both dead!\" Jessica screamed as her eyes rolled back in her head, clasping the cropped mass on her scalp between manacled hands, audible sobs wracking through her tender frame.

Tiera stopped and looked at the emptied contents laying on the floor, then back at Big D\'s ominously imposing body shifting slowly towards her. Seeing Jessica broken gave her a strange sense of accomplishment in her life in the magical world and she reached down to retrieve the necklace.

Lucius and Severus watched all the while and would later relate back to Jessica how Tiera placed the necklace around her, spoke an incantation and fell to th floor in a crumpled heap. Jessica\'s head snapped up as Big D\'s lung-puncturous growl filled the small room with a vengeance uncontested and kicked the dead Tiera square in th jaw. With a lunge at Pettigrew, Big D hurled her lifeless form out of the room and shut the door, leaving three of his own against four shackled and grinning.

\"Don\'t be thinking yourselves too smart,\" a Macnair like voice sounded from just behind Jess\' head, slipping a hand between her legs and rubbing fiercely. Jessica snarled and twisted her body around to whap him in the face with her metal attached weapon. Bellatrix was the one to stupefy her but not before Lucius, who\'d only recently recovered from his own stupefy ala Snape, head butted her and sent her reeling to crash against the wall behind, a random torch catching fire to her hair.

There she sat, burning alive until all that was left were a few teeth. Grinning like mad, Severus, although all \"strung up,\" leered at the remaining man guarding the door who was obviously trembling beneath his alabaster mask, too cool for words against the heat of his skin. Cait groaned and felt like puking when she saw the man rush up to fetch his wand which was stupidly left on a table beside Lucius\' cuffs and was impaled upon a transfigured spear after a slight of hand on Lucius\' part - even wizards know a thing or two about David Coperfield.

Big D\'s voice was heard just before each apparted to Hogwarts\' gates, promising gouging and splitting and revenge glaore upon their peresons. He had amost been God.


A/N: There we are, now for a denoument.